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Carnival Ride (album)
Carnival Ride is Carrie Underwood's second studio album that was released on October 23, 2007 by Arista Nashville. The album debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200 chart, selling over 527,000 copies and achieving one of the biggest ever first-week sales by a female artist. It was Underwood's first album to debut at number one on the Billboard 200 and second to debut atop the Top Country Albums chart. It was certified quadruple platinum, sold 3.4 million copies in the United States and four million copies worldwide. Five singles were released from the album: "So Small", "All-American Girl", "Last Name", "Just a Dream", and "I Told You So". The first four of which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, thus making Underwood the first solo female artist to pull four number one's from one album since Shania Twain in 1995-1996. All singles were Top 30 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, with "I Told You So" climbing to number nine and both "So Small" and "Last Name" reaching the Top 20. The album and its songs were largely praised by music critics. Underwood won two Grammy Awards: one for "Best Female Country Vocal Performance" for "Last Name", at the 2009 Grammy Awards, and one for "Best Country Collaboration" with Vocals for "I Told You So", at the 2010 Grammy Awards. The album was nominated for "Album of the Year" at the Academy of Country Music Awards and Country Music Association Awards and won the American Music Award for Favorite Country Album, in 2008. Background Underwood has explained the meaning behind the album's title and theme, saying: “You step onto this ride called life, and it’s a crazy thing you don’t know anything about, but you get on it anyway. You do what you can to lean different directions to try and get it to go where you want it to go, but you can’t stop it – it just keeps moving. That’s why Carnival Ride works as my album title, because it describes the wonderful craziness that I’ve been through over the past couple years." Two of this album's tracks have been previously recorded by other artists. "Flat on the Floor" was previously cut by singer Katrina Elam on her unreleased 2007 album Turn Me Up, and was a number 52 hit on the country charts for her that year. "I Told You So" is a cover of a song previously cut by Randy Travis on his 1988 number one album "Always & Forever". Travis' version of the song was a Number One hit on the country charts that year. Underwood and Travis recently released "I Told You So" as a duet single on iTunes, and they also performed it on the results show of the eighth season of American Idol during the Grand Ole Opry week. The duet later went on to win the 52nd Grammy Award for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals". Marketing & promotion Underwood promoted the record through the Carnival Ride Tour which ran through 2008. It started late January and ended on December 14, 2008. She performed over 137 live shows since the start of the tour, performing to over a million people. She debuted several of her singles at the Academy of Country Music Awards and the Country Music Association Awards. She also appeared on several shows to promote her album including The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Saturday Night Live, Live With Regis and Kelly, The Early Show, American Idol, Good Morning America, Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve, The View, and at the Grand Ole Opry. A Limited Edition CD/DVD release was made available only at Target stores. The DVD includes four live acoustic performances, as well as a four-part interview. Following this a Platinum MusicPass edition was released on January 15, 2008. This release included a previously unreleased track and two music videos. On October 21, 2008, a 2-disc set was released at Wal-Mart. The second CD contains five Christmas tracks, of which all were available for radio download on September 29, 2008. One of the tracks, "Do You Hear What I Hear", was previously released on the 2007 album "Hear Something Country Christmas". Tracklisting #Flat On The Floor #All-American Girl #So Small #Just A Dream #Get Out Of This Town #Crazy Dreams #I Know You Won't #Last Name #You Won't Find This #I Told You So #The More Boys I Meet #Twisted #Wheel Of The World Singles "So Small" served as the lead single for the album. It was released in mid-September 2007, two months before the album's official release and debuted on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs at number 20, making it the highest chart debut by a solo country female artist in 43 years of Nielsen BDS history. It eventually held the number one spot for 3 consecutive weeks. It also became her fifth top 20 hit when it peaked at number 17 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100. "So Small" has become a cross-over hit, selling over 1,088,000 downloads and being certified Platinum. The second single, "All-American Girl", was released around December 2007. It also became a success by hitting number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs where it stayed on the chart for 2 weeks and on the Canadian Country Charts where it stayed there for 5 weeks. It also managed to be a top 30 single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, where it peaked at number 27, making it her sixth top 30. As of 2015, "All-American Girl" sold 1,800,000 copies in the United States. The song was certified 2x Platinum. The third single, "Last Name", became Underwood's fastest single to hit number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs after only 13 weeks of its official release around April 2008. It stayed there for one week. It is also Underwood's sixth top 20 hit, reaching number 19 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The song also won Underwood her third consecutive Grammy award in the "Best Female Country Vocal Performance" category. As of November 2015, the song has sold 1,300,000 copies. The fourth single, "Just a Dream", reached Number One on the country charts for the chart week of November 8, 2008 and stayed there for 2 weeks, thus making Underwood the first solo female artist to pull four number one's from one album since Shania Twain did it with "The Woman in Me". It became her seventh Number One single on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart and eighth Number One country single overall. The song also managed to reach number 29 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100, becoming her 10th top 30 there. The song also gave Underwood her fourth consecutive Grammy award nomination in the Best Female Country Vocal Performance category. The song was certified Platinum on the week ending on September 4, 2011, giving Underwood her 7th Platinum hit. As of November 2015, it sold 1,280,000 copies. The fifth single from the album, "I Told You So" was officially released on February 2, 2009, becoming Underwood's fourth top 10 all-genre hit, peaking at number nine on the U.S Billboard Hot 100. On the week of April 10, it climbed to the top of the Canadian Country Charts and stayed there for one week. The song peaked at number two on the Hot Country Songs chart, making it only her second country single to not reach number one on that chart after "Don't Forget To Remember Me" which also peaked at number two. Underwood rerecorded the song with original artist Randy Travis, and the song won them the Grammy Award for "Best Country Collaboration with Vocals." As of January of 2013, the song has been certified Platinum; it has sold 1,089,000 copies as of November of 2015. Chart Performance "Carnival Ride" became Carrie Underwood's first number-one album on the U.S. Billboard 200, selling 527,000 copies in its first week of release. It achieved one of the biggest ever first-week sales by a female artist at that time. In its second week, the album sold less than 190,000 copies. The album also debuted at number 1 on the Top Digital Albums, Top Country Albums, and Top Canadian Albums charts. The album has sold 3,400,000 copies in the United States. In October of 2016, it was certified 4x platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for combined sales and album-equivalent units of four million units. It also appeared on the Billboard Year-End Charts for 2009 at number 74. Critical Reception "Carnival Ride" received mostly positive reviews from music critics. On the music review aggregator Metacritic, it has received an average score of 72 out of 100 based on ten reviews indicating generally favorable reviews. The first official review of the album from AllMusic gave it 4 out of 5 stars, on par with what they gave her debut. The site classified the album as "completely contemporary country" and said "the remarkable thing about Carnival Ride is that it's stronger song for song than Some Hearts." They also praised the album for having "the appearance of a genuine heart, something that no other big country-pop album has had since the glory days of Come On Over." USA Today also praised the album for its versatility saying, "The songs call for vulnerability (You Won’t Find This), urgency (Flat on the Floor), sympathy (Crazy Dreams, her co-written salute to “the hairbrush singers and dashboard drummers” from whose ranks she sprang), humor (The More Boys I Meet, the tag line of which goes “The more I love my dog”) and extreme role-playing (Last Name’s saga of a bar pickup that turns into an impulsive Vegas marriage). She delivers on all counts." The Boston Herald gave the album a B, and claimed, "Underwood manages enough spunk to occasionally avoid the cookie-cutter, especially with the curious beat-box-meets-banjo arrangement of "Get Out of This Town" and "Just a Dream," a bona fide tearjerker about a young war widow." Category:Albums Category:Carrie Underwood Albums